The present invention relates to the cracking of hydrocarbons and more particularly to a diffusion flame reactor for hydrocarbon gas.
Cracking is extensively used in petroleum processing for fracturing hydrocarbon molecules into smaller fragments. Thermal cracking, including catalytic cracking and hydrocracking, are extensively used for converting residual crude fractions or a heavy distillate into gasoline and light distillates, or reducing the viscosity of residual fractions, or for the production of coke. Coking and visbreaking are extensively used to convert hydrocarbons into more valuable products.
In particular, the manufacture of ethylene, acetylene, propylene, butenes, and butadienes from hydrocarbons having carbon number from 2 to 10 is an important part of petroleum processing.
It is an object of the present invention to crack hydrocarbons with a flame reactor which has no walls around the reaction zone.
It is another object of the present invention to minimize the problems of heat transfer across reactor walls and wall coking.
It is another object of the present invention to improve the efficiency of the cracking process.